At Davos, Rising Stress Spurs Goldie Hawn Meditation Talk

A woman sits on a sun chair at the top of the Jakobshorn mountain to catch the afternoon sunlight in Davos. Photographer: Simon Dawson/Bloomberg

Jan. 21 (Bloomberg) -- As business and political leaders
gather in Davos this week, those weary of the palaver on trade
alliances, mergers and charity initiatives can stop by the
Congress Centre on Thursday morning. There, Goldie Hawn will
expound on the benefits of meditation.

The “mindfulness” panel with Hawn, star of the 1975 hit
film “Shampoo,” is among 25 sessions at the 2014 World
Economic Forum discussing wellness, mental health, and the
potentially pernicious effects of technology on the brain.
That’s at least 50 percent more wellness-related presentations
than in 2008.

The theme shows how anxiety over stress and its impact on
business is mounting among the Davos set, who’ve spent the last
five years dealing with crises from the collapse of Lehman
Brothers to the Syrian civil war -- all connected 24/7 to their
beeping, buzzing smartphones. Mental health-related illnesses
may cost $16 trillion in lost output over the next 20 years,
according to figures from Harvard University and the WEF.

“People are becoming aware of the huge economic impact”
of illness, said Norbert Hueltenschmidt, a partner at
consultancy Bain & Co. who is involved in seven Davos sessions
on physical and mental health. “Healthy living is at the top of
this year’s agenda and you see it throughout the program --
there’s never been a year like this one.”

Champagne Schmoozing

The goal of the sessions, Davos organizers say, is to draw
attention to problems of mental health, disease, and stress that
increasingly afflict global populations -- as well as the
Forum’s own attendees. The worldwide burden of mental and
substance-abuse disorders climbed almost 38 percent between 1990
and 2010, authors including the University of Queensland’s
Harvey Whiteford wrote last year in the medical journal The
Lancet.

Among Davos delegates, “there’s maybe a greater
recognition that the levels of stress of the last five years are
not going to go away,” said Robert Greenhill, the Forum’s Chief
Business Officer. “We may not be in the crisis we were, but
there’s no sense of a return to complacency.”

For those with energy to burn between pre-dawn breakfast
meetings hard on the heels of late-night Champagne-and-schmoozing sessions sponsored by the likes of Google Inc. and
McKinsey & Co., organizers are encouraging attendees to sign up
for the “Davos Health Challenge” -- a series of commitments to
exercise, stay hydrated, and get enough sleep.

Body, Mind

“You cannot separate body and mind and what we call the
spirit. Health is a combination,” said Nerio Alessandri, the
CEO of Italian exercise equipment manufacturer Technogym, who’s
in Davos this week for the fifth time. Still, he said, simply
convincing the rarefied attendees of the summit to lead
healthier lives isn’t enough. “The idea is making an impact on
decision-making, on policies.”

On the sidelines of the main Forum, an inaugural Health
Summit will bring together executives, academics and government
officials to talk about large-scale challenges. The health
focus, encouraged by business leaders including Sanofi CEO Chris
Viehbacher, isn’t entirely altruistic.

For businesses, “there is accumulating evidence about how
one’s psychological well-being affects one’s productivity,”
said Laura Tyson, a Davos participant who headed the U.S.
Council of Economic Advisers during the Clinton administration.

Detox Weekends

In the last two years Lloyds Banking Group Plc and Barclays
Plc have seen executives take extended leave or resign due to
stress and exhaustion. And Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Credit
Suisse Group AG, and Bank of America Corp. are among firms that
have limited working hours for junior staffers in an effort to
retain talent and cut stress. A Bank of America intern in
London, Moritz Erhardt, died of an epileptic seizure in August
after working day and night in the weeks beforehand, prompting
the New York-based firm to review its practices.

While stress has long been an issue for senior executives,
underpinning interest in the subject in Davos is an emerging
body of research indicating that constant attention to
smartphones, tablets, and other electronic devices may be
affecting the human brain. Even in Silicon Valley, some techies
are signing up for “Detox Weekends” that ban devices, and
attending conferences like Wisdom 2.0, an annual yoga-and-meditation confab.

40-Day Retreat

“We created our own problem that we are now trying to
solve,” said Loic Le Meur, a Davos regular who co-founded the
Le Web tech conference in Paris and says he began meditating six
months ago. “We’ve been completely addicted to Facebook and
Twitter and always being bombarded by your phone or the Internet
nonstop.”

Meditation is attracting particular attention from
executives who see it as a method for alleviating stress and are
starting to emulate long-time adherents like Bill Gross, the co-chief investment officer of Pacific Investment Manager Co. Hawn
is on two panels dealing with the subject, including
“Meditation: Why the Hype,” where she’ll sit alongside a pair
of scientists and Matthieu Ricard, a Buddhist monk who founded
the Karuna-Shechen humanitarian association.

“The fact they call people like us is symptomatic” of an
unmet need for values and purpose, said Ricard, who is capping
off a 40-day retreat at a French hermitage with a trip to Davos,
where he’ll lead delegates in meditation. “People know this is
important, but they need both the voice of reason and the voice
of care, or altruism, to convince them to make changes.”

Meditation App

Davos attendees aren’t ready to swear off technology
entirely. The panelists for a session entitled “Rewiring the
Brain,” for instance, include Daphne Bavelier, a University of
Geneva scientist who has studied the beneficial effects of
activities like playing video games. “In any technological
revolution, we have seen there are bads and goods,” she said.

Nor are delegates totally switching off their gadgets, even
when trying to take a break from all those glowing screens. Le
Meur said that when learning how to meditate last year he didn’t
bother with visiting a mountaintop retreat or Buddhist temple.
Instead, he used a smartphone app called Headspace.